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Time to Get Greedy

It's scary to buy when others are selling, but that's how fortunes are made.

And not just the wise guys on Wall Street. I mean you and me. We're all nuts, and I'll prove it.

If you liked it at $60 ... We know the shtick. "If you liked Sirius Satellite Radio(NASDAQ:SIRI) at $60, you gotta love it at $30." That was New Year's Day 2001. Two years later, you'd lost another 90% to $1.50 per share. And Sirius was just for starters.

As you'll see in the table below, it was the same story for Qualcomm(NASDAQ:QCOM) and mighty Intel(NASDAQ:INTC), too. Ouch. Could the exact same thing happen today? Sure. Will it happen today? Who knows?

Either way, you'd be nuts to ignore the harsh lessons we learned from the last market crash, right? Not so fast. Here's why I'm getting greedy instead.

You probably should own stocks I have to own stocks. I'm about as likely to switch to bonds and money markets as I am to take up competitive bridge -- at least for the next 20 years or so. Every shard of evidence I've collected confirms I have to own stocks.

And here's the catch for folks like you and me. If we want to own stocks, we have to buy stocks. That is, unless you borrowed against your future wages and overstuffed your portfolio at the market bottom in 2003. Otherwise, to be a stock investor, you have to keep buying stocks. It's that simple.

So, could we sit on our hands for a while instead? Sure, but what exactly are we waiting for? So we can pay even more next month? That's nutty. Remember, we can't know how today's stock prices will look relative to tomorrow's -- just that stocks are still cheaper today than when we loved them in 2000.

How to catch a falling knife OK, it's time I showed you that table. But before I do, I warn you -- it's scary. Scary enough to prevent you from having gotten burned in 2001? Yes, but it's even scarier for another reason.

Company

Peak

Jan. 2001

Subsequent fall to bottom

Qualcomm

$92.51

$34.54

(65%)

Intel

$75.83

$31.06

(54%)

Brocade(NASDAQ:BRCD)

$133.72

$75.50

(94%)

Broadcom(NASDAQ:BRCM)

$183.17

$56.00

(86%)

*Prices are split-adjusted.

You read that right. Even after their stomach-turning initial plunges, every one of those former highfliers fell an additional 54% to 94% between January 2001 and their respective bottoms somewhere in 2002 or early 2003. I told you it was grim.

Now it gets really scaryA prophetic glimpse of that table in March 2000 might have spared you some pain in 2001. But what about when the market plunged 39% in 12 days back in October 1987? Or when stocks "cratered" in 1991 ... or the dozens of other times stocks have pulled back 20% or more. You see where I'm going with this, right?

Not only would an obsession with that one little table have kept you from picking up some terrific bargains, it could have kept you on the sidelines, looking on as everybody around you got wealthy. And you'd probably still be out of the market now. If you ask me, that's worse than trying to catch a thousand falling knives.

So, where are we now?I honestly don't know. I'm hearing sporadic murmurs of another crash. But this is not March 2000. Remember, every stock in the table we just saw had run up tenfold before heading south. We didn't know for certain we were in a bubble then, but we did know that stocks, especially tech stocks, were more ridiculously expensive than they'd ever been before.

Is that the case today? I don't think so. Not even for strong businesses like the small caps that Tom Gardner is sharing with members of his Motley Fool Hidden Gems newsletter service. True, about a dozen of those picks have doubled since the team found them. But that's strong performance, not bubblicious -- especially given the relative lack of institutional funds flowing into these stocks.

It is, however, enough to make you feel like you've missed the boat. I know I sure did. But over the course of the summer, even the best of these Hidden Gems finally pulled back a bit and gave us a second chance. Don't be surprised if we get another chance to exact our revenge.

Living well is the best revengeThat's why I'll continue to buy on any weakness. Recently, I bought the SPDR Homebuilders (XHB) ETF for broad exposure to what looks like an unstoppable long-term demographic trend -- and to exact my revenge on Centex(NYSE:CTX) and Pulte Homes, which I sold too soon, like a dope.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for a pullback in First Marblehead(NYSE:FMD), a company that arranges low-cost loans for graduate and undergraduate students. However, I may be waiting in vain -- FMD is one of the stocks I mentioned earlier that have doubled for Hidden Gems members, and it looks unstoppable.

No worries. I have my eye on the Hidden Gems scorecard top to bottom. But that doesn't mean stocks can't go lower from here. A lot of folks think they will. Then again, a lot of folks always think stocks are going lower. Which is strange, given that the long-term trend has always been higher. That's why I say we have to own stocks.

Moreover, while I can't predict where the markets are headed near-term, it's certain that the stocks of America's very best companies will always head higher over the long haul -- no matter what happens to the "market." For the life of me, I can't see why we wouldn't want to buy them when they're on sale.

Finally, a word of cautionThat table I showed you earlier is real, and it represents a world of hurt for investors. The lesson, however, isn't that you should avoid stocks. It's that you have to be selective and/or diversify. There's certainly no shame in buying a low-cost exchange-traded fund (ETF) -- I own two small-cap ETFs myself. But I also know something better.

Tom Gardner and Bill Mann are bargain-hunting, too. This month in Hidden Gems, they give you two new top picks, as usual. But they also rank their five favorite small caps for new money right now. It's all spelled out for you in the new issue and online.

In fact, you can check it out, plus every past pick and all back issues, in about five minutes -- at no cost and with no pressure to subscribe. To see how easy it is and accept your free trial, click here.

This article was originally published on July 19, 2006. It has been updated.